Contact centers engage with various parties for many different reasons. For instance, some contact centers operate to provide customer service for many businesses so that customers of these businesses may contact these centers to obtain assistance with activities such as, for example, placing orders for goods or returning goods for a refund. Other contact centers operate to provide technical support for businesses' customers so that these customers can find help in operating products sold by the businesses, as well as correcting problems encountered in operating these products. In addition, contacts centers engage these various parties using a variety of different channels of communication such as telephone calls, email, texts (short messaging service (“SMS”) and/or multimedia messaging service (“MMS”)), video chat, social media, fax, and web-based chat.
However, most engagements conducted by contact centers with parties are limited to an agent who is handling a particular communication for a contact center and a single party who is actively engaged in the particular communication. For example, an agent who is conversing on a telephone call with a party is typically limited to only conversing with the party on the call (although in some instances, an agent may be able to bridge in another employee of the contact center such as another agent or supervisor). If for some reason information is needed during the call that the party cannot provide, then the agent and party must typically end the call so that the party can go and retrieve the needed information from someone who is not present on the call.
For example, a party may be on a call with an agent who is assisting the party in applying for a loan from a bank. During the call, the agent may request personal information about the party's spouse that the party does not readily know, such as his spouse's social security number. The party may be at work so he is unable to just ask his spouse while on the call because she is not present. Therefore, the party must end the call and then call back the contact center once he has obtained his wife's social security number. However, when the party calls back, he is not likely to be routed to the same agent who handled the previous call and may be required to start from the beginning of the loan process. This can result in frustration on the part of the party. What would be helpful is if the party and agent on the initial call could have bridged the party's wife onto the call while they are still conversing to obtain the wife's social security number instead of having to end the call and forcing the party to call back once he had obtained his wife's social security number so that he could continue the loan process.
Therefore, a need in the art exists that would allow for a third party to bridge onto a communication involving a party and a contact center (e.g., agent in the contact center) during the time the party and contact center are actively engaged in the communication. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure herein is presented.